Students tested right after a lecture tended to answer factual questions equally well regardless of how they took notes, but students who handwrote their notes did consistently better on conceptual questions. What’s more, when students were tested again a week later, the longhand note takers performed consistently better on both factual and conceptual questions.

This has since been confirmed in studies among other types of populations. As Isaac Asimov said, “Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.”

But maybe we need to take a step back and discuss writing, regardless of the method. Some of us have long enjoyed writing, be it notes, books, or blogs. However, many people have never picked up or embraced the skill.

“What I was reading wasn’t making any sense,” said [Jesse] Sanchez, principal of the main high school in Brawley, a town in a remote desert region of California a half-hour drive from the Mexican border. What worried him most was the poor quality of students’ writing, which showed some lacked the ability to make coherent arguments for projects they wanted to do to earn a special graduation sash and a note on their transcripts recording project completion. Sanchez responded by creating a school-wide program that requires all students to write regularly in every class, including P.E., where earlier this year, students wrote about what they had learned regarding muscle anatomy and weight training.

This wasn’t just a mandate to write, but a program coordinated across all aspects of the school, with faculty supported with their own training programs. What was the result?

English language arts scores rose 30.6 percentage points to 64.6 percent of students meeting or exceeding standards on Smarter Balanced tests from 2014-15 to 2016-17, while math scores increased by nearly 17 percentage points to 29.9 percent achieving those benchmarks. It’s a significant achievement for the Brawley high school, where 74 percent of students are low-income; 22 percent are learning English; and 10 percent are migrants, who change schools during the year to follow their parents’ work in agriculture or other industries.

Other results include more kids writing better applications for colleges, resulting in furthering their education and eventually their careers.

Writing is thinking, and writing well helps clarify thinking. The writing program at Brawley is undergoing continuous improvement while promoting critical thinking.

The school is tweaking its writing program each year, based on student and teacher feedback, Sanchez said. All teachers are receiving training in grading writing assignments according to a rubric that requires students to respond to a question by restating the issue, answering the question, citing sources, and using evidence to support conclusions.

What is the problem? What are potential solutions? What data and evidence supports the conclusion?

How can writing be incorporated as a value-adding activity into the workplace? A3 reports, analysis of quality issues, proposals for new equipment or human assets, customer and supplier collaboration, project presentations – there are many areas.

Improving and reinforcing writing skills adds critical thinking value to both the team member and the organization.

For years my wife and I had been fans of our Keurig. Pop in a pod and in a minute you had a decent cup of coffee. Simple, clean, and seemingly “lean” since the process was optimized with very little waste. That changed when The Atlantic published an article in 2015 describing just how wasteful it really was. So much so that even the inventor of the machine has disavowed it, and over 10 billion K-cups now make their way to the garbage every year. “Recyclable” K-cups are on the way, but importantly they are still not compostable, hence most will still end up in the garbage. Keurig machines themselves are not reparable, so hundreds of thousands of them are also ending up in landfills.

This was a major problem for us, both because we live in a beautiful part of the country and are environmentally sensitive, and also because of my strong belief that “respect for people” is the most important component of lean. “Respect for people” is really “respect for humanity” – and extends outside of the organization, outside of suppliers and customers, to the community. Environmental stewardship is therefore important to a true lean organization, and is why, for example, Toyota paints the “smoke” stacks of their factories yellow so the community can see that very little pollution is being created.

So what options besides the Keurig do we have for a single cup of coffee? Even though I switched to decaf over two years ago, I still love the flavor and like having a cup of joe first thing in the morning. We tried a couple of conventional drip brewers, but were disappointed with the taste. For several months we even did a quick 5 minute run to the local coffee shop each morning, but that also seemed a bit ridiculous from a value perspective, even though we did use our own flasks or recycled the cups and lids when we forgot it.

Then one day a friend introduced us to the pour over. The flavor was rich and deep, with an aroma you could smell from across the room. We started the research, and were soon overwhelmed with the components and process. It seems simple, but it’s really not. Just throw some grounds in a filter, dump hot water on it, and you have coffee, right? Not if you want a really good cup. Many call it an art, but I don’t like that term – everything is a process in some form.

First you need the equipment. After reading a lot of reviews we settled on the Osaka, which has a stainless steel filter. Some people prefer paper filters, but they can interfere with the taste – and they create some waste. The Osaka is simple, inexpensive, and easy to clean.

Then you need a proper kettle. A standard tea kettle doesn’t have a precision spout which, as I’ll describe shortly, is critical. We ended up getting the Fellow Stagg from Williams-Sonoma, which also has a built-in thermometer to ensure the proper water temperature.

To really get a tasty brew you should grind the beans just before use, preferably with a burr grinder. Blade grinders shatter the beans creating uneven particles.

For raw materials you need water, preferably filtered. A high quality coffee is also best, and we enjoy Peet’s Major Dickason’s Blend. Buy the smallest quantity of beans possible so they are fresh.

The process is critical. Even minor variations can cause major changes to the flavor of the final product. Here’s ours:

Ensure all equipment is available and clean, and all raw materials are available.

Fill the kettle half full and turn on the stove.

Grind enough beans to make four tablespoons of ground coffee, which is enough to produce a 16 oz cup of coffee.

Place the filter into the flask and evenly add the ground coffee.

By now the water should be at the proper temperature: 195-205˚ F, easily determined thanks to the thermometer in the kettle.

The bloom pour: gently pour twice as much hot water as grounds onto the grounds, starting in the center and spiraling outward. Wait 30-45 seconds. This saturates the grounds and starts the extraction process.

The main pour: gently and slowly pour hot water onto the saturated grounds, again beginning in the center and spiraling outward, then inward. The grounds should never be swimming, therefore this is a slow process and will take 3-5 minutes to yield 16 ounces. It is also a very mindful, meditative activity. You must be focused on that one activity, clearing the mind of other thoughts. A perfect way to condition and calm the mind for the day.

Pour the coffee from the flask into your coffee cup, adding cream or sugar as desired.

But you’re not done! Now it’s important to thoroughly clean all equipment, and returning them to their proper location so the process can be repeated the next morning. If more raw materials – coffee – are necessary, write a note to pick up more.

Yes this is several more steps than the Keurig, but the resulting value – and reduced waste – is also much greater.

Equipment needs to be sized and specified to match and support the desired process. Spending a bit more can optimize this relationship, improving value and even reducing cost later on.

The process, and process parameters, need to be very well defined. Many components of the process are related to individual taste – value from the perspective of the customer. Methodically experiment with coffee brand, grind size, and equipment to find the right combination. Kaizen.

Executing the process must consistent and requires total focus. From start to finish, which really takes all of 5-10 minutes, there needs to be total focus, especially during the main pour. Standard work.

Inventory the smallest amount possible, and prepare and use exactly the amount of raw materials needed. Just in time.

At the end, the work area and equipment is cleaned and returned to the defined original condition. This will make it easy to repeat the process the next morning. 5S.

Enjoy the coffee! A perfect pour over is a great way to start the day!

“We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.” – John Dewey

I’ve written before about how I’ve worked hard to develop a habit of reflection… daily, monthly, and annually. Although the end of the year is an arbitrary time, it is a convenient time to find a few days to be alone and look back on the prior months. This year I’m taking advantage of a couple days when my wife will be at a conference to sequester myself on a beach, disconnect, and ponder some questions. What had I planned on doing, what ended up happening, how can I improve on that, and what will I plan on doing this coming year?

A few weeks before my annual ritual I also look for some inspiration that will help me look at the process of reflection – it is a process – from a new perspective. One year Jon Miller recommended Edgar Shein’s Humble Inquiry, which I found fascinating from many angles. This year a friend told me about John Dewey, and specifically his book How We Think. It’s definitely not as easy of a read as Schein’s, but there are some jewels.

Dewey dives deeply into thinking processes, and how our thoughts create beliefs that may be fallacious.

Such thoughts grow up unconsciously and without reference to the attainment of correct belief. They are picked up — we know not how. From obscure sources and by unnoticed channels they insinuate themselves into acceptance and become unconsciously a part of our mental furniture. Tradition, instruction, imitation — all of which depend upon authority in some form, or appeal to our own advantage, or fall in with a strong passion — are responsible for them. Such thoughts are prejudices, that is, prejudgments, not judgments proper that rest upon a survey of evidence.

So we need to look at how we think, and how that’s contributed to what we perceive, ie reflective thought.

Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends, constitutes reflective thought… It is a conscious and voluntary effort to establish belief upon a firm basis of reasons.

Thinking … is defined accordingly as that operation in which present facts suggest other facts (or truths) in such a way as to induce belief in the latter upon the ground or warrant of the former. We do not put beliefs that rest simply on inference on the surest level of assurance. To say “I think so” implies that I do not as yet know so. The inferential belief may later be confirmed and come to stand as sure, but in itself it always has a certain element of supposition…

[There are] certain subprocesses which are involved in every reflective operation. These are: (a) a state of perplexity, hesitation, doubt; and (b) an act of search or investigation directed toward bringing to light further facts which serve to corroborate or to nullify the suggested belief.

From which reflection is also a process.

Reflection involves not simply a sequence of ideas, but a consequence — a consecutive ordering in such a way that each determines the next as its proper outcome, while each in turn leans back on its predecessors. The successive portions of the reflective thought grow out of one another and support one another; they do not come and go in a medley. Each phase is a step from something to something — technically speaking, it is a term of thought. Each term leaves a deposit which is utilized in the next term. The stream or flow becomes a train, chain, or thread.

Intentional reflection, therefore, is not just sitting on the beach and letting a “medley” of thoughts on the past year flow through my head. It is a planned analysis.

I’ll begin with the foundation of last year’s plan and the data of the results from that plan. I can then review what happened to each element of the plan and break that down to look at potential root causes for failures. It’s important to also look at root causes for successes, as those can be built upon and optimized. Then what are the commonalities between what happened with various elements of the plan? What experiments can I try to improve? What do I expect to happen? How and when will I know if I have succeeded or failed? How can I apply and integrate that into what I want to accomplish over the next year? How does that align with my personal principles, values, and my “why?” What do I want to stop doing?

I’ve loosely followed that process in the past, but I want to be more disciplined this year. A couple of solid, disconnected days in solitude sound about right for this activity.

Walking has become a much larger part of my life over the past few years. It started when I embraced kinhin – walking meditation. Walking slowly on the beach for an hour or so, one step per breath, barefoot and silent to engage all of the senses. The mind is calmed, allowing reality and ideas to flow in. Since then I’ve added regular walking, averaging over 15,000 steps a day, and actively trying to increase that average each week.

Over forty years ago, growing up in Peru, my parents would take us on grand walking tours of Lima and other cities every weekend. Hours on end, probably a hundred miles or so a day – at least it seemed like that to a young kid. I hated it at the time, but looking back I’m very thankful for the experience. Living overseas widens perspectives and creates understanding and acceptance.

I lost that walking fever when I returned to the U.S. to go to college. Perhaps it was the notorious icy blizzards of upstate New York, but somehow a walk down to the dorm kegerator seemed sufficient. Anything else required begging a ride from someone lucky enough to own a car. After college I’d use a car to drive a block to the store. Pathetic. And I didn’t realize what I was missing. I did know I wasn’t missing the pounds that slowly crept onto someone who used to be on the high school swim team.

A few years ago, and especially over the last two years, I started to work hard to get into better shape. Crossfit, running on the beach, even running a marathon. It’s worked and I feel great (thanks, Paul Akers!). But I realized that even though I looked for opportunities to exercise, I was still driving just a few blocks to the gym, post office, bank, and so forth. Our little beach town isn’t large – just 10,000 people. Is driving really necessary?

So one day I walked to the gym, then the next day to the post office, then the next day to lunch. Within a week I was hooked. Soon I was taking a few hours on Saturday morning to walk to the end of our 6 mile beach, and back. Now when I travel I have to find time for walking. While at the AME conference in Boston a few weeks ago I was able to convince a few colleagues to walk the several miles to dinner. Great sights, great conversation, great exercise.

You see, I discovered it’s not just about exercise, although it’s amazing what just a few thousand steps a day will do to your body.

Walking calms your mind. Even if you don’t formally practice kinhin, walking slowly, preferably without supplemental audio, lets your thoughts slow and settle. After even a short walk you feel more balanced, upbeat, and creative.

Walking lets you (and teaches you?) observe at the speed of reality. I’ve been surprised at what I’ve found in our small town, even though I’ve lived here for seventeen years. Just the other day I noticed a plaque buried in what used to be a garden across the street from city hall. Looking closer, I discovered it was in memory to a Hope Miller, and later I looked her up and learned an interesting story about our town. I’m sad that the garden planted in her memory two decades ago has become unruly. Maybe I’ll change that.

Walking lets you meet and get to know new people. On my long walks I’ve met several neighbors, merchants, and tourists from around the world. Some of these connections have turned into new friendships. While walking to dinner at the AME conference I was able to get to learn more about a couple team members that I rarely see in person since we’re in different offices.

In the lean world we know the power of going to the gemba to observe the reality of the value creating process, to help team members see through your eyes, and to challenge processes. Walking, even around your neighborhood, can be similar – and more.

Ever since I visited Italy over a decade ago my inner geek has had a fascination with traffic engineering. If you’ve visited Italy, or many similar places, you probably know why. Traffic appears chaotic, thanks in part to what appears at first glance to be a lack of signals and other controls. To those of us with highly-regimented traffic control systems this feels crazy and even scary. Until we realize something:

Traffic flows continuously, pretty much everywhere.

Now it may not be a fast, but the net effect is often more flow than the stop-and-go signal-driven batch movement that exists in many U.S. cities. Traffic engineers have recognized this as well, with many cities intentionally removing signals.

In fact, the chaos associated with traffic in developing countries is becoming all the rage among a new wave of traffic engineers in mainland Europe and, more recently, in the United Kingdom. It’s called “second generation” traffic calming, a combination of traffic engineering and urban design that also draws heavily on the fields of behavioral psychology and — of all subjects — evolutionary biology. Rejecting the idea of separating people from vehicular traffic, it’s a concept that privileges multiplicity over homogeneity, disorder over order, and intrigue over certainty. In practice, it’s about dismantling barriers: between the road and the sidewalk, between cars, pedestrians and cyclists and, most controversially, between moving vehicles and children at play.

The psychology of this is particularly interesting. In countries with highly-controlled traffic the emphasis has been on reducing chaos by removing human decisions. This has had the negative effect of disengaging drivers (and pedestrians, bikers, etc.) from the environment, which can actually create more risk.

“One of the characteristics of a shared environment is that it appears chaotic, it appears very complex, and it demands a strong level of having your wits about you,” says U.K. traffic and urban design consultant Ben Hamilton-Baillie, speaking from his home in Bristol. “The history of traffic engineering is the effort to rationalize what appeared to be chaos,” he says. “Today, we have a better understanding that chaos can be productive.”

Hamilton-Baillie argues that the key to improving both safety and vehicular capacity is to remove traffic lights and other controls, such as stop signs and the white and yellow lines dividing streets into lanes. Without any clear right-of-way, he says, motorists are forced to slow down to safer speeds, make eye contact with pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers, and decide among themselves when it is safe to proceed.

Removing traditional signals can be scary or disturbing. A first step is often replacing intersections with traffic circles, or roundabouts. Those of us that have lived in the northeast U.S. know they are fairly common, but here on the west coast they’re still rare.

A few years ago my small town of 10,000 replaced a complex five-way intersection with a traffic circle. Believe it or not, that circle reduced the number of stop lights in our town by 33% – from 3 to 2! Even though the number of traffic accidents dropped to about zero and flow is far smoother, the community remains very divided. I personally love it, and zip through the circle at least a couple times a day.

Now the city wants to replace one of the two remaining lights with another traffic circle. Once again it makes a lot of sense as the intersection being considered is complex – three streets plus the on and off ramps for the Pacific Coast Highway. One issue is that it is a half block from the high school, and some residents are concerned about kids walking and driving near a “dangerous circle.”

We have part of the community that has looked at the science described above, as well as the improved results from our first traffic circle, and are proponents of the new circle. And we have another part that is analyzing the proposal on a more emotional level, often based on a handful of anecdotal close calls with the existing traffic circle, and legitimate and understandable concern about our school kids. I don’t know what the city will decide.

It strikes me that this is very similar to what many of us have gone through with lean transformations. Traditional batch manufacturing makes sense, and one piece flow feels counterintuitive. Even after seeing it in action, perhaps even something as “real” as the envelope-stuffing exercise, dishwasher kaizen, or lean bathroom, it sometimes just doesn’t seem right.

Nearly two decades ago I had left the medical device industry to jump into telecom photonics equipment. My team was responsible for the operations side of a facility that was a recently-acquired startup in the space, with a product that became so popular it created an almost immediate 12-18 month backlog. Nice problem to have, eh? I thought so, which is why I jumped. To top things off, it also happened to be located in one of the nicest small towns on the California central coast.

This was no average piece of equipment. It was a large rack that could concurrently test up to 500 lasers used for long-haul fiber optic communications. Depending on configuration a single rack could cost nearly a million dollars.

When I joined, the operations group was struggling to ship one unit a month, and orders were coming in a multiples of that. With just a couple of exceptions no one had worked on a manufacturing floor before, let alone a lean one. Partially-built racks were scattered around, parts were missing for most subassemblies, and a large amount of time was spent un-building racks to scavenge parts in hopes to complete one of the others.

The first thing I did was institute a morning stand up meeting. We discussed and documented on a board the schedule and current status of all racks. We then spent time on 5S to reduce “lost” parts, one piece flow to get out of the habit of partially building then un-building racks, and standard work to document processes. There were many struggles and lots of educating on the sometimes counterintuitive perspective of lean.

Just five months later, in March 2001, we were shipping 10 racks a month, with the same floorspace and people.

The team was thrilled at what they accomplished, and they took certain liberties with the production bar chart that we would color in at each morning’s meeting. Signatures, fish tank motifs, the overflowing water when we significantly overachieved the goal for the month. I had it framed, and it has been hanging next to my desk at every subsequent position I’ve held. You can click on the image to see a larger version. Corporate management, 200 miles south, liked the dramatic change in cash flow, but never really understood how we did it.

That chart is my personal monument to lean.

It celebrates the power of lean, reminding me of how much value can be created in just a few short months. But it also reminds me of many lessons, lean and otherwise.

You see, the month after this achievement, our customers suddenly realized that they had overbuilt long-haul fiber optic capacity. We had seen a cancellation or two in the previous few months, considered them odd anomalies and didn’t dig deeper, but then over the next couple months the entire 18 month backlog was cancelled. By August we were almost idle and hoping for orders, and on September 10th, 2001 – the day before 9/11 – the company announced that the operation would be closed and the product line discontinued. From 0 to 100 to 0 in less than a year.

One lesson was that lean can create amazing improvements, but it can’t offset a lack of demand – and it’s imperative to keep a keen eye on external factors.

Our leadership team, sometimes against the wishes (or even the knowledge) of our corporate parent, did things right for the employees. We negotiated significant severance, helped with job searches, and bent our ears and held many hands. It was rough, but all of them eventually landed on their feet, locally or elsewhere. Many of them went on to improve their new operations, demonstrating again that the true (compounding?) power of lean is in the teaching and knowledge of people – not just the tools. Another lesson.

Monuments are interesting artifacts. Not only do they celebrate the past and remind us of lessons, they continue to teach.

As I’ve continued on my own journey, new experiences add context and answers to what happened in the spring of 2001. I’ve thought about how valuable it would have been to know about Training Within Industry – TWI – during those days. Coincidentally, Gemba Academy has just released a series of videos on Job Relations, and earlier this year released a course on Job Instruction. When I eventually got the top job at a multi-site medical device company, my monument continued to remind me of the power of people. Just looking at it encouraged me to leave the office to spend time at the gemba. Reporting to our board of directors I was reminded of how, back in 2001, I failed to educate my offsite corporate boss on how lean enabled the success of our photonics operation – and I took a different path.

Today my monument reminds me of the fragility of improvement, the importance of focus, and how critical it is to go beyond the gemba to see the value of your products from the eyes of your customer. Most importantly, it reminds me of the power of people. When times get tough I’ll reflect on my monument, conveniently only a couple feet away, and often see an answer. Or at least realize that if I made it through those crazy times, I can make it through this one.

What are your monuments to the journey? How are they still helping you today?